Nokia fires up new security team for mobile broadband

Nokia is launching a new unit in June that will help develop new more secure mobile broadband products as well as new business models for telco security.

Relieved of its devices business, mobile broadband is Nokia's main source of networks revenue, and on 1 June, the business group will gain a new "security unit" as part of Nokia's plan to boost its related revenue from telcos.

"The new security unit will bring together security experts and talent from across the company – customer operations, global services and technology and innovation teams, for example — with the aim of tackling the full set of requirements for robust telco security," Marc Rouanne, EVP of mobile broadband at Nokia, said in a statement.

"We will continue to encourage industry dialogue and knowledge sharing in terms of security research to improve awareness of this crucially important area of telco business, including with open source software. This will become critically important as mobile broadband networks are starting to evolve towards the cloud."

The new unit will also build on its security partner ecosystem that includes Juniper, the OpenSSL project, Check Point and F-Secure among others. Nokia in April also donated funds to the OpenSSL project to help prevent bugs such as Heartbleed.

Nokia used to sell security appliances, but that business was sold to Check Point in 2008. More recently it launched Mobile Guard, a product for operators that analyses mobile network traffic to detect devices with suspected malware.

Nokia last month appointed Rajeev Suri as the new president and CEO of the company, whose three units include its mapping business Here, its patents and R&D arm known as Technologies, and its networking unit. According to Nokia's first quarter earnings report, mobile broadband made up 54 percent of its networks revenue.